Brooks was born in Brooklyn, New York, to James and Kate (née Brookman) Kaminsky.[4] His father's family were German Jews from the Baltic Sea port of Danzig (present-day Gdańsk, Poland); his mother's family were Ukrainian Jews from Kiev.[5] He had three older brothers, Irving, Lenny, and Bernie. His father died of kidney disease at 34 when Brooks was two years old.[6] Brooks has said of his father's death, that "there's an outrage there. I may be angry at God, or at the world, for that. And I'm sure a lot of my comedy is based on anger and hostility. Growing up in Williamsburg, I learned to clothe it in comedy to spare myself problems—like a punch in the face."[7]

After the war, Brooks started working in various Borscht Belt resorts and nightclubs in the Catskill Mountains as a drummer and pianist. Around this time he changed his professional name to "Mel Brooks"[13] (Brooks is from his mother's maiden name Brookman) after being confused with the well-known Borscht Belt trumpet player Max Kaminsky.[7] After a regular comic at one of the nightclubs was too sick to perform one night, Brooks started working as a stand-up comic, telling jokes and doing movie-star impressions. He also began acting in summer stock in Red Bank, New Jersey and did some radio work.[7] He eventually worked his way up to the comically aggressive job of Tummler (master entertainer) at Grossinger's, one of the Borscht Belt's most famous resorts.[7][14]

Brooks and co-writer Reiner had become fast friends and began to casually improvise comedy routines when they weren't working. Reiner would play the straight man interviewer who would set Brooks up as anything from a Tibetan Monk to an astronaut. As Reiner explained, "In the evening we'd go to a party and I'd pick a character for him to play. I never told him what it was going to be. "[7] On one of these occasions Reiner's suggestion was a 2000 Year Old Man who had witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (who "came in the store but never bought anything"), had been married several hundred times and had "over forty-two thousand children, and not one comes to visit me." At first Brooks and Reiner would only perform the routine for friends, but by the late 1950s it had gained a cult status in New York City. Kenneth Tynan saw the comedy duo perform at a party in 1959 and wrote that Brooks "was the most original comic improvisor I had ever seen."[7]

In 1960, Brooks moved from New York to Hollywood. He and Reiner began performing the 2000 Year Old Man act on The Steve Allen Show. Their performances led to the release of the comedy album 2000 Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks that sold over a million copies in 1961.[7] They eventually expanded their routine with two more albums in 1961 and 1962, a revival in 1973, a 1975 animated TV special and a reunion album in 1998.

Brooks adapted the 2000 Year Old Man character to create the 2500 Year Old Brewmaster for Ballantine Beer in the 1960s. Interviewed by Dick Cavett in a series of ads, the Brewmaster (in a German accent, as opposed to the 2000 Year Old Man's Yiddish accent) said he was inside the original Trojan horse and "could've used a six-pack of fresh air. "[15]

In 1962, Brooks wrote the Broadway musical All American. Brooks wrote the play with lyrics by Lee Adams, and music by Charles Strouse. The show starred Ray Bolger as a southern science professor at a large university who uses the principles of engineering on the college's football team and the team begins to win games. The show was directed by Joshua Logan, whose script doctored the second act and added a gay subtext to the plot. The show ran for 80 performances and received two Tony Award nominations.

In 1963, Brooks was involved in the animated short film The Critic, a satire of arty, esoteric cinema, conceived by Brooks and directed by Ernest Pintoff. Brooks supplied running commentary as the baffled moviegoer trying to make sense of the obscure visuals. The short film won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film.

In 1965, Brooks teamed up with comedy writer Buck Henry to create a comedic TV show about a bumbling James Bond inspired spy. Brooks explains, "I was sick of looking at all those nice sensible situation comedies. They were such distortions of life... I wanted to do a crazy, unreal comic-strip kind of thing about something besides a family. No one had ever done a show about an idiot before. I decided to be the first."[16] The show that Brooks and Henry created was Get Smart, starring Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86. This series ran from 1965 until 1970, although Brooks was not involved with its production after the pilot episode.[17]Get Smart was highly rated for most of its production and won seven Emmy Awards,[18] including Outstanding Comedy Series in 1968 and 1969.

The Producers was so brazen in its satire that major studios would not touch it, nor would many exhibitors. Brooks finally found an independent distributor who released it as an art film, a specialized attraction. In 1968 Brooks received an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for the film beating such writers as Stanley Kubrick and John Cassavetes. The Producers became a smash underground hit, first on the nationwide college circuit, then in revivals and on home video. Brooks later turned it into a musical, which became hugely successful on Broadway receiving an unprecedented twelve Tony awards.

With the moderate financial success of the film The Producers, Glazier financed Brooks's next film in 1970, The Twelve Chairs. Loosely based on a Russian 1928 novel The Twelve Chairs by Ilf and Petrov about greedy materialism in post-Revolutionary Russia, the film stars Ron Moody, Frank Langella and Dom DeLuise as three men individually searching for a fortune in diamonds hidden in a set of twelve antique chairs. Brooks himself makes a cameo appearance as an alcoholic ex-serf who "yearns for the regular beatings of yesteryear." The film was shot in Yugoslavia with a budget of $1.5 million. The film received poor reviews and was not financially successful.[7]

Young Frankenstein was the third highest grossing film domestically of 1974, just behind Blazing Saddles. It earned $86 million worldwide and received two Academy Award nominations: Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay and Academy Award for Best Sound. It received some of the best reviews of Brooks's career and even critic Pauline Kael liked the film, saying that "Brooks makes a leap up as a director because, although the comedy doesn't build, he carries the story through...Brooks even has a satisfying windup, which makes this just about the only comedy of recent years that doesn't collapse."[7]

In 1981, Brooks joked that the only genres that he had not spoofed were historical epics and Biblical spectacles.[7]History of the World Part I was a tongue-in-cheek look at human culture from the Dawn of Man to the French Revolution. The film was written, produced and directed by Brooks with narration by Orson Welles. This film was another modest financial hit, earning $31 million. It received mixed critical reviews. Critic Pauline Kael, who for years had been critical of Brooks, said "Either you get stuck thinking about the bad taste or you let yourself laugh at the obscenity in the humor as you do Bunuel's perverse dirty jokes. "[7] As part of the film's soundtrack, Brooks, then aged 55, recorded a rap entitled "It's Good to Be the King", a parody of Louis XVI and the French Revolution co-written by Pete Wingfield. It was released as a single and became a surprise dance hit in the United States.[citation needed]

Like Brooks's other films, the film is filled with classic one-liners, and even the occasional breaking of the fourth wall. Robin Hood: Men in Tights was Brooks's second time exploring the life of the infamous Thief of Hearts, the first, as mentioned above, having been with his 1975 TV show, When Things Were Rotten.Life Stinks was a financial and critical failure, but is notable as being the only film that Brooks directed that is neither a parody nor a film about other films or theater. (The Twelve Chairs was actually a parody of the original novel.) In 2000s, Brooks worked on an animated seriessequel to Spaceballs called Spaceballs: The Animated Series, which premiered on September 21, 2008 on G4 TV. Brooks has also supplied vocal roles for animation. He voiced Bigweld the master inventor, in the 2005 animated film Robots, and had a cameo appearance as Albert Einstein, in the 2014 animated film Mr. Peabody & Sherman.[24] He will return to voice Dracula's father, Vlad, in 2015's Hotel Transylvania 2.[25]

One of his most recent successes has been the transference of his film The Producers to the Broadway stage. The show broke the Tony record with 12 wins, a record that had previously been held for 37 years by Hello, Dolly! at 10 wins. Such success translated to a big-screen version of the Broadway adaptation/remake with actors Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane reprising their stage roles, in addition to new cast members Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell in 2005. In early April 2006, Brooks began composing the score to a Broadway musical adaptation of Young Frankenstein, which he says is "perhaps the best movie [he] ever made. " The world premiere was performed at Seattle's Paramount Theater, between August 7, 2007, and September 1, 2007 after which it opened on Broadway at the former Foxwoods Theater (then the Hilton Theater), New York, on October 11, 2007. It earned mixed reviews from the critics.

Brooks joked about the concept of a musical adaptation of Blazing Saddles in the final number in Young Frankenstein, in which the full company sings, "next year, Blazing Saddles!" In 2010, Mel Brooks confirmed this, saying that the musical could be finished within a year. No creative team or plan has been announced.[26] He confirmed this again in 2011,[citation needed] on the HBO special "Mel Brooks and Dick Cavett Together Again".

Brooks is one of the few artists who have received an Oscar, Emmy, Tony, and Grammy. He was awarded his first Grammy for Best Spoken Comedy Album in 1999 for his recording of The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 with Carl Reiner. His two other Grammys came in 2002 for Best Musical Show Album for the soundtrack of The Producers and for Best Long Form Music Video for the DVD "Recording the Producers - A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks". He won his first of four Emmy awards in 1967 for Outstanding Writing Achievement in Variety for a Sid Caesar special and went on to win three consecutive Emmys in 1997, 1998, and 1999 for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his role of Uncle Phil on Mad About You. Brooks won his Academy Award for Original Screenplay in 1968 for The Producers. He won his three Tony awards in 2001 for his work on the musical, The Producers for Best Musical, Best Original Musical Score, and Best Book of a Musical. Additionally, he won a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award for Young Frankenstein. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted #50 of the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. Three of Brooks's films are on the American Film Institute's list of funniest American films: Blazing Saddles (#6), The Producers (#11), and Young Frankenstein (#13).

Brooks developed a repertory company of sorts for his film work: performers with three or more of Brooks's films (The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World: Part I, Spaceballs, Life Stinks, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and Dracula: Dead and Loving It) to their credit include Gene Wilder, Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, Harvey Korman, Cloris Leachman, Ron Carey, Dick Van Patten and Andréas Voutsinas. Dom DeLuise appeared in six of Brooks's 11 original films, the only person with more appearances being Brooks himself.

Brooks and his wife Anne Bancroft acted together in Silent Movie and To Be or Not to Be and Bancroft also had a bit part in the 1995 film Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Years later, the couple appeared as themselves in the fourth season finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm, spoofing the finale of The Producers. It is reported that Bancroft encouraged Brooks (after an idea suggested by David Geffen) to take The Producers to Broadway, where it became an enormous success.

In interviews broadcast on WABC radio, Brooks has discussed with NYC radio personality Mark Simone the possibilities of turning other works from his creative oeuvre (such as the movie Blazing Saddles) into future musical productions. Specifically, in a conversation airing March 1, 2008, he and Simone speculated on what show tunes might be incorporated into a theatrical adaptation of the Get Smart property.

On December 5, 2009 Brooks was one of five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D. C.[27]

In 2014, Brooks was honored in a handprint and footprint ceremony at TCL Chinese Theatre. His concrete handprints include a six fingered left hand as he wore a prosthetic finger when making his prints.[30]

Brooks was married to Florence Baum from 1951 to 1961; that union ended in divorce. Mel and Florence had three children, Stephanie, Nicky, and Eddie.[31] Brooks was married to stage, film and television actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death from uterine cancer on June 6, 2005. They met at a rehearsal for the Perry ComoVariety Show in 1961 and married three years later, August 5, at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau. Their son, Max Brooks, was born in 1972.

In 2010, Brooks, a widower, credited Bancroft as being the guiding force behind his involvement in developing The Producers and Young Frankenstein for the musical theater, citing an early meeting as "From that day, until her death on June 5, 2005, we were glued together."[32]

Regarding religion, Brooks has stated "I'm rather secular. I'm basically Jewish. But I think I'm Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all."[33]